Don’t hate me because it’s summer and I don’t feel like knitting a stitch. Don’t ask me where that came from either, it’s just the first thing that popped in my head when I started this post.

No Cookies in the Library
I stumbled onto this on YouTube and thought, “Cookie Monster would love our library since we have a cafe with cookies.”

I’d love to say that I’ve finished so many projects lately that I have a whole slew of them to show you but I don’t. Last week, I knitted my first stitch in about three weeks. I traveled to Kansas about two weeks ago and had planned to get some sewing done but I just didn’t have the time. Before I left for Kansas, I did whip up a cute little skirt from Sew What Skirts and cut out another one to work on while I was visiting my parents. A few things I did manage to do while I was gone were putting in, ripping out a zipper and resewing it into another skirt that I hadn’t finished. Last week for the Harry Potter party, I realized I didn’t have a black skirt to wear so I just bought some fabric and whipped up a cute black skirt. Since I had my sewing machine out, I also finished the skirt I’d been working on in Kansas. I’ll get photos up soon.

While I was gone I worked on the baby quilt, I finished two of the edges and am working on the other two then I’ll be sending it off.

While I was in Kansas, I was able to visit the Hays Public Library. It’s the library I grew up in and was anxious to see their remodeled and expanded building. What a great library and extremely inviting when you walk in. They’ve put a lot of time and work into making it a very browseable library. In two areas, they’ve arranged the shelves so that there are small alcoves of shelves, sort of what you’d see in a bookstore. I was very impressed and now know why my grandfather brags about the library so much. The best part was that they still have the castle in the children’s department that I remember spending so many hours in.

The Harry Potter party we had at the library was a big success. We handed out all of our books, more than 300, in less than 14 minutes. One of my favorite parts of the night was the reactions of the kids when they were handed the new Harry Potter book. You’d thought that they had been handed the greatest thing they’d ever seen. It makes me so happy and excited to see kids this excited about a book. The café in our library was open that night too and served butterbeer, pumpkin juice and various other Harry Potter related treats. Now people asking when is the next big party at the library. I think people not only loved the activities we had going on but the fact that the library was open late on a Friday night and it was a party. It was a lot of fun working that night, but it took me the entire next day to recover. Saturday we’d planned to go blueberry picking and I was exhausted from the night before but that wasn’t going to stop me from going to the blueberry farm. I was a gorgeous day out and to be outside I think helped me recover some.

More than anything else I’ve been reading a lot. I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban en route to Kansas and started and finished The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld while I was there. Last week and most of Sunday I read New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, the sequel to Twilight that I mentioned in my previous post. I literally read the entire day on Sunday. Sunday evening, I started the fourth Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With all of the Harry mania, I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in it. I’m enjoying the books and this is a case where I want to be like everyone else and finish the series.

The weeks are counting down and I can’t believe that in three weeks, I’ll be in the middle of my graduate assistant training at the library I’ll be working at this fall. School starts in about four weeks, fortunately my first class isn’t until August 28, so I have some time. I was checking into the book list for my children’s lit class and I think it’s going to be a really fun class. Having to read children’s picture books for class, what fun.

Well, I have jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon recently. Several years ago I read the first two Harry Potter books. After being disappointed with the second book, I’ve had no desire to pick up the third one until now. Our library is having a Harry Potter party and I’m working the circ desk that night. I can’t help but get caught up in the excitement of all of the anticipation. I’m slowly working my way through the book only because I’ve been working on my baby quilt and other sewing projects. If I plan to be a young adult/teen librarian after finishing school, these are must-read books for me.

This has been the summer of YA/teen books for me again as they are the perfect summer reading books. They have great stories and don’t get really hung up in some of the stuff that adult books get hung up in, plus they are quick reads. Two other books that I’ve really enjoyed in the last few weeks are American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang was the winner of the Winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award, which is the award for excellence in young adult literature. It’s a graphic novel and one of the best graphic novels I’ve read. Bryan and I really enjoyed it and both highly recommend it. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. A great vampire love story between a normal human girl and a vampire that she meets at school. Books like these really make me excited that there are such great books out there for teenagers. It really gives me hope that we won’t have a generation of kids that are so plugged in that they can’t enjoy the pleasure of sitting down and reading a book in a quiet room.

Have you been reading a lot this summer? What have you been reading? Do you have books that you specifically save for summer reading? I’d love to hear about what you’ve been reading this summer.